What We Do
Our Work
Our donors and charities are at the heart of everything we do. As a leading and neutral convener, The Community Foundation of Singapore (CFS) helps individual and corporate donors drive greater impact through effective giving to build a better future for all in Singapore. We endeavour to provide support where needed, improve quality of life through social support, culture, arts and sports, and enhance our living environment through green initiatives.
Drawing on over a decade of experience, CFS is a thought leader in strategic philanthropy. Together with leading organisations, we provide philanthropic advice for global family offices, investments by trusts and foundations, and legacy giving.
We constantly strive to expand our network with charities, government agencies, and researchers, keeping a close eye on emerging needs in the community and discovering meaningful funding opportunities to offer to our donors. We aim to amplify philanthropy and legacy through our partnerships with professional advisors and ambassadors.
Our Services
Philanthropy advisory
Leveraging CFS’s expertise in grantmaking, our philanthropy consultants will work with donors to identify funding opportunities.
Fund administration
CFS handles all the administration required in managing donors’ funds. Donors will also receive regular updates on their funds, allowing them to focus on their philanthropy.
Safeguarding grants
CFS ensures all grants are made with high levels of care and accountability, along with reporting on major grants.
Keeping donors engaged
CFS provides donors with opportunities to deepen their understanding of the local landscape in Singapore.
Our Funds
Donor-Advised Funds
CFS helps donors to set up a donor-advised fund (DAF) – a charitable fund account to which an individual or organisation can contribute, to support causes that they are passionate about.
A donor can choose to set up either a flow-through fund or endowment fund with us. Donations via a flow-through fund will be spent down in grantmaking, while the principal sum donated to an endowment fund is invested to generate an annual stream of income for grantmaking in perpetuity. To learn more about DAFs, please click here.
Community Impact Funds
Community Impact Funds (CIFs) are flagship programmes established by CFS in partnership with charities to address unmet needs or under-supported social issues in Singapore. CFS takes a ground-up approach to understand the needs of care recipients and outcomes they care about to ensure that they would truly benefit from these programmes.
A CIF is a pooled fund that anyone can support to raise awareness and funding for a particular cause. The Sayang Sayang Fund, set up in 2020, is our latest CIF. To learn more about CIFs, please click here.
Striving Ahead
In keeping with Singapore’s vision to be a regional philanthropy hub, CFS is committed to contribute significantly to the growth of strategic philanthropy by playing four key roles in the next five years:
Enabler
CFS is a social value multiplier by directing donors to charities determined to be doing good work based on our evaluation criteria.
Steward
Being cause-neutral, CFS will serve as a steward to build social trust capital that will be used to support Singapore’s changing needs.
Convener
CFS will be the intermediary between donors, non-profit organisations, government agencies and other stakeholders committed to co-creating innovative solutions to address our country’s evolving social needs.
Advocate
CFS will lead by being in the forefront of innovation and thought leadership in philanthropy.
CFS has embarked on a transformation journey to support our aim to build capability, capacity and infrastructure for the Singapore philanthropy ecosystem. We have five key strategies:
1. Enable philanthropy by outreach and engagement to expand our donor base and number of donor-advised fund we manage.
2. Grow culture of giving by continuing our promotion of legacy giving.
3. Integrate philanthropic conversations into financial planning by working closely with financial and legal advisors.
4. Champion innovation in philanthropy via our Centre for Applied Philanthropy (CAP) to focus on new giving models, collaborative initiatives and pooled funds.
5. Utilise technology to improve our capacity to manage more donor-advised funds, widen our service offerings, enhance our donor and grantee experience as well as improve governance and maintain trust.
